Paradise Piranhas took home high point and first place finish at Firecracker Invitational during the weekend-long event competing against sixteen other teams.
The Invitational started Friday and consisted of the boys and girls 100 and 200 IM, and the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle swim. The meet continued Saturday with a variety of individual and relay swim events including both boys and girls competing in the backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, butterfly and medley relay races. On Sunday a team spirit relay took place with coaches and parents involved in the swim meet. Also, on Sunday the swimming consisted of boys and girls Freestyle, Breaststroke, Backstroke and Butterfly.
This swim meet is the biggest home event of the season according to Jaime Luevano, head official and Paradise Piranhas parent.
“We were second place last year so we’re trying to make a push and see if we can overtake a very strong Orland team.”The goal is to have fun throughout the weekend, encourage bonding with all the swimmers, you’ll see a lot of swimmers from different teams hanging out together Luevano said.
“Swim team provides an atmosphere that breathes confidence with all of the swimmers. From our six and unders up to our 17 and 18 year olds.”
Elise Luevano, Paradise Piranhas swimmer and sophomore at Paradise High School said she is stronger at long distance but is working toward faster events to compete in all of them.
“The 400 IM, 200m butterfly and the 500 freestyle those are long tough events that most people don’t want to do but I like doing them because it feels like I have proven to be a stronger swimmer.Competing and getting the points for our team and getting the awards feels really cool.”
Being able to do all of the long distance events and showing she can do this really long,tough race and place pretty high she added.
Devin Kutil, a Chico resident and Paradise Piranhas coach said there are about 50 swimmers from the team at the meet. Long course swims were Friday, Saturdays were ages four to age 18 years old. Sunday was the finals awards day, all the swimmers did their relays and the swimmers who accumulated the most points with their swims and the overall points combined, which teams did the best got awarded Kutil said.
“Every swimmer is swimming against their age subset and how they perform in that age group is how many points they get for the team.”Kutil said. “Once all swims are done we accumulate the points, some swimmers get high points in their age group and the teams are top three high point which is what time accumulated the most points over the three days.”
The high point winners were:
Lilly Rowe 9-10 girls
AnaGloria Luevano 11-12 girls
Owen Brown 13-14 boys
Taryn Monnot 15-16 girls
Julia Taylor 17-18 girls
Josh Lubetkin 17-18 boys
The second place runner-ups were:
Rachael Brennan 13-14G
Hunter Barnard 15-16B
Brittany Mittag 17-18G
and honorable mentioned were third to sixth place winners.
Durham Dolphins received second place and Chico Aqua Jets received third.
Paradise Piranhas will compete at Orland Otter Invitational next weekend.
For the full list of winners for each event visit http://www.swimconnection.com/ sn/exec/MeetResultsDispatch? meetSeqNo=2830&teamCode=
